Database management applications using relational and object oriented models are used to facilitate storage, maintenance and retrieval of information. Since databases are utilized by a wide variety of end-users in different industries, and for a variety of different purposes, individualized management applications are employed to suit the particular needs of each end-user. Development of such individualized management applications requires appreciable programming skill, and a relatively large proportion of the cost of creating and maintaining a database can be attributed to the difficulties of developing an appropriate database management application. It would therefore be desirable to provide a development environment which would make database management application development less difficult.